QuantCon takeaways

Over the past few days I've been in New York, meeting with clients. I also attended and presented at QuantCon NYC 2017, Quantopian's annual conference. It was my first time at QuantCon, and I had been expecting a relatively small affair. With several hundred attendees and multiple streams, it was one of the biggest quant conferences I've taken part in (along with Global Derivatives). Attendees ranged from retail traders, to students, to quants working in large financial institutions. Each group had their own different viewpoints about trading. As a result, the conversations I had during the conference ended up being quite varied. Judging by my conversations with students at the event, finance is still seen as an exciting industry. This has also been my experience speaking to students at Thalesians events, who still seem just as enthusiastic about the market, although admittedly, there are many more competing opportunities, in particular in the tech industry. So perhaps there is hope the future of the finance industry? So what were my main takeaways from QuantCon and highlights from the various talks that I attended?

One of my favourite talks was given by Robert Carver, who was previously the head of fixed income at AHL. Robert is now an author, and also trades futures on his own trading book. His talk was entitled "Trading strategies That Are Designed Not Fitted". He tried to compare the way we make cars, to that which we employ to develop trading strategies. He advocated trying to develop a framework for the creation of strategies to try to reduce the problem of overfitting. He also advocated an ideas first approach to trading strategies, as opposed to a data first approach.

To read the rest of the article please go to the Cuemacro website here